Saturday, 10 October 2015

VITON SPACEX BLASTER

Its fun to consider the original use of the SpaceX LAMA ray gun. Ed Valigursky designed the original artwork for the 1966 re-issue of SINISTER BARRIER by Eric Frank Russell.

Russell first published the story in 1939. It concerns invisible creatures in the sky hostile to Man. These creatures are essentially thought vampires called the Vitons.

Here's Wiki's paragragh on the ray gun itself:

...researchers all over the world struggle to find a form of radio transmission that will kill Vitons. Graham continues to seek out clues, obtaining them from people that the Vitons kill. Eventually he gets the necessary information and a ray gun, built like an anti-aircraft gun, is set up and tested.

Graham destroys dozens of Vitons before the gun is destroyed and he is nearly killed. All relevant information on the gun has been widely disseminated and more guns are built and put to use. Seeing Vitons being destroyed, people sober up and the war winds down. There’s a huge mess to clean up and plenty more Vitons to kill, but Humanity will prevail.

4 comments:

Funny to read that plot outline on wikipedia, which is quite different to the one I wrote (for the website in the works) after reading the book. :)

Didn't know the story was based on any theory, so thanks for that!

As stories go it's not that bad a read (though not up to the level of Wells's War of the Worlds as is claimed on the cover of the paperback featuring the Valigusky art :) provided you're willing to believe that a single government agent can discover an invisible menace of greater intelligence and then set in motion all it takes to defeat it and save the world...

It's great to see this LAMA Ray Gun! That's one I don't have in my (somewha humble) Spacex collection. I just found the book illustration reference here: http://www.risingshadow.net/library/book/34172-sinister-barrier